In March, depth is overrated -- or is it?

Thursday

But that's no revelation. Everybody wants to play. Maybe The Odd Man Out plays, maybe he doesn’t.

He thinks back to just a couple months ago, when they were calling his name as a starter at Kansas.

"It’s real tough," Travis Releford says, "coming from the beginning of the season, when I was playing a lot, and starting a little bit, and now I’m down to, like, whatever happens."

Whatever happens might be the best way of describing KU's depth at this point of this year. The Jayhawks don't play 10, except when they do. Whatever happens.

Releford, a third-year sophomore from Kansas City, is the ultimate whatever happens guy. He has registered playing time numbers of DNP ("did not play"), one minute, DNP, one minute, DNP, five minutes and one minute in KU’s last seven games.

A 6-foot-5 slasher, Releford is good enough Kansas coach Bill Self has called him the kind of player who could score 1,000 points in his career. Yet as the season went on and the bench shortened, Releford’s seat slipped out from under him.

As No. 1 seed Kansas (34-2) prepares to play No. 12 seed Richmond (29-7) at 6:27 tonight in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament, Releford doesn’t even know if he’ll pull off the warmups.

This is little more than a simple March reality. A rotation of 10 becomes eight or nine by February, and by March, when TV timeouts are so long fatigue isn’t an issue, even players eight and nine are sometimes lucky to get time.

"You can’t play 10 guys this time of year," Self said. "There’s really no reason to unless that’s your philosophy. Travis is kind of the odd man out right now, but he works his tail off every day and he’ll be ready if his number’s called."

You know, if "whatever" happens.

Self has said more than once that depth is overrated this time of year, when the bench shortens for both practical and strategic purposes.

But calling something overrated implies a level of dismissiveness that, at least in KU’s case, betrays the truth. Maybe you can cut into your bench when March arrives, but you’re probably going to need it on the way there.

For example, without Mario Little, who hasn’t played more than seven minutes in KU’s last three games, there’s no guarantee Kansas is a No. 1 seed in this tournament.

His free throw with a second left gave KU a win over UCLA on Dec. 2, his 17 points jumpstarted KU in a 17-point win over Missouri on Feb. 7, and a couple big buckets against Oklahoma State bailed out the Jayhawks in a one-point Big 12 Tournament win over Oklahoma State.

"Hey, let’s not take away from those eight core guys we’ve been playing," Self said. "To me we’ve got eight starters, or nine starters, and they’ve all been good. Some have been better than others, but we’ve always had somebody play well in certain games and that’s what we’re gonna need again."

That Missouri game in February might be the greatest example of that. Not only did Little come up big, it was Releford’s last big game, too. He scored 10 points on 4-of-5 shooting that night, meaning KU’s ninth and 10th men combined to go 11 of 14 to separate the Jayhawks from the hot-shooting Tigers.

Those guys, now, are fighting to hang on.

"You know you’ve at least got to be the seventh to make it," Little said. "You never know. Sometimes you might fall to eighth. You try to go hard in practice, try to leave a good impression, a good taste in his mouth before gametime, so he won’t forget about you."

True as all that may be, though, there remains the real possibility that just about anybody on the team could be called on in some specialized situation. Some may recall two years ago in Minneapolis, when Kansas was having a heck of a time slowing down North Dakota State guard Ben Woodside in the first round.

For six minutes, Self put in Tyrone Appleton, a junior college transfer who had no expectation of playing that night, with instructions to essentially guard Woodside and do no harm. Appleton did so, spelling Sherron Collins and Tyshawn Taylor in the process, effectively stealing KU a few minutes in a 10-point win.

Self made a similar move with Releford in this year’s first-round game against Boston U, putting him in for five first-half minutes to slow down Terriers swingman John Holland.

"We needed a stop, and coach wanted me to give the guy a different look," Releford said. "It kind of slowed him down a little bit."

So the odd man out sits at his locker in the Alamodome on Thursday, not knowing what fate may hand him the next night. He might not play at all. But he might end up being that guy who steals KU some minutes, who turns the game just a couple clicks in KU’s favor. The Odd Man out is the Ninth Starter, too.

"I just come in the game ready," he said, "whenever."

Whatever happens.

Tully Corcoran can be reached at tully.corcoran@cjonline.com.

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